1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a microscope which can be positioned and focused in response to voice commands from the microscope user.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There are many applications for microscopes which are positionable within a small field of movement, particularly in the practice of microsurgery. There are available surgical microscopes including a fixed base with a cantilevered support for a microscope a supporting structure for and its focusing mechanism. Such available surgical operating microscopes can be positioned within a limited field of movement by control motors which position the microscope mount at selected locations within the limited field of movement. The control motors can be operated by pressing appropriate buttons or foot pedals. Existing microscopes respond by moving in a vertical direction, i.e., up and down. Additionally the microscope can be caused to tilt about one or more axes by means of appropriate mountings, e.g., gimbel joints, control motors. Further, the microscope focal length can be established by means of control motors which increase or decrease the space between ocular and objective lenses.
In another technology discipline, isolated word recognition systems have been developed to recognize and discriminate isolated words which have been trained into the systems. Such speech recognition devices have been summarized by D. Raj Reddy in an article entitled "Speech Recognition by Machine: A Review" published in the Proceedings of the IEEE, April 1976, page 501-531.
At the present time, microsurgeons control the position and focus of surgical operating microscopes (1) by manual adjustment of the microscope, (2) by manually pressing buttons on control boxes and (3) by pressing pedals to position the surgical operating microscope where needed, when needed and with the appropriate focal length. In the course of most microsurgical procedures, the operating surgeon has both hands fully occupied with surgical instruments and is unable to make manual fine adjustments of the surgical operating micrscope in the middle of a surgical routine, e.g., completing a suture, exposing a tissue, etc. It is impractical to have other person in the operatory attempting to make adjustments to the surgical operating microscope.
Accordingly there is a need for a surgical operating microscope which can be positioned and focused in response to speech commands from the microscope operator. There is also a need for programmable microscope movements, and a need for instantaneous voice-commanded stop functions and a need for the control system to speak back or to display to the operator an indication of which function is active in the microscope. There is a need to provide equipment which can be retrofitted to existing, costly controllable-position microscopes to achieve these objectives in existing equipment.